Our Eastern Med Celebrity cruise had two stops in Turkey. Prior to the cruise I read that Turkey required a Visa for all visitors. I received conflicting reports on-line and misleading information from Celebrity on what to do. Celebrity pointed me towards a third party agency who wanted me to mail my passports and pay them several hundred dollors for the visas. Finally, someone in the Turkish consulate itself in Washington, said cruisers did not need a visa. We went with that recommendation. Glad we did.

It turned out that the ships personnel took our Passports on boarding. They took care of all port clearances, invisibly to us. Passports were returned to us by the next to last port of call. This practice worked out beautifully. Why couldn't Celebrity have told me that was their practice when I called them? If I had done what Celebrity told me to do, I would have been extremely at wasting the time and money, not to mention the runaround in trying to find out an answer that they already knew.